Entries tagged with staying in shape

In spite of the fact that I probably won't quite make my daily word-count (I'm only 500 words away, but ... ehhhhhh), I feel like I was really pretty productive in terms of writing today! I did some work on my Yuletide assignment, which I'm starting to think actually may not suck, and got through some good scenes in the NaNovel, and even snuck a blog post, a smidge of RPing, and the beginning of an idea for a Shakespeare Deleted Scene to work on post-NaNo.

Plus I went for a run, which was preeeeetty terrible as runs go because it was COLD and RAINY and ugh ugh ugh. Just not feeling it. I may need new music.

At work today, in between editing and uploading images (shameless plug for the online store, if you or someone you know enjoys quilting and Alaskana), I ended up outlining about half of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fic to lienne wherein Looking-Glass Land is actually all that stands between the real world and Lovecraftian horrors, and as the looking glass that the League confiscated has begun to act strangely, a young Sherlock Holmes is tasked by his brother to get Alice Liddell out of the madhouse so that she can defeat the Elder God, the Snark.

(*dry* I can pinpoint for you each reinterpretation of Alice that's influencing that, and how. Yeah, I'm still plugging away at an article.)

So I went to this dinner/auction/production of Midsummer Night's Dream tonight at ATY, which was fun in spite of the cold I'm catching -- but also intensely weird. They had three different screens playing videos, most of which involved clips from old productions, including clips of my performances in Midsummer (2005) and Julius Caesar (2006). ~Nostalgia!~ Man, Caesar was a kickass show.

I ought to go for a bike ride tomorrow if the weather's nice, although I have been informed by my sister that my bike is barely worth the amount Dad paid for it at the thrift store ($25, several years ago).

Saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang at the on-campus theater last night. OH RDJ. <333333 What do I have to do to be in the Avengers movie? Seriously, dude. Besides the obvious steps of, uh, building up an acting career in Hollywood. *rueful*

(Speaking of, I heard some casting rumor about Thor and now I can't remember who it was. *frowns* Anyone got an idea? It was somewhat unexpected but not bad. Brad Pitt?)

Anyway. RDJ. GAY PERRY oh my god. I cannot handle the amount of awesome. Now I want a triple feature of The Big Lebowski, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and In Bruges. (One of these things is not like the other, but I think In Bruges fits the general kind of aura of KKBB well enough to qualify. Also, Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. 'nuff said? 'nuff said.)

I feel obliged to say something, though, about how annoying I find it that in so many movies/TV shows, the inamorato is considerably older than the inamorata. RDJ was 40 and Michelle Monaghan was 29 in KKBB. Nathan Fillion is eight years older than Morena Baccarin. Edward Norton is eight years older than Liv Tyler. Richard Gere is nineteen years older than Julia Roberts.

I mean, I know age is not an insurmountable difference in real life, it's just . . . it's a real double standard in Hollywood, I think, part of the whole industry's difficulty in dealing with women aging. Hell, Harmony says it in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: "She's 35. Her career is over. Give it up."

I think that's part of why I like Paul Gross and Martha Burns in Slings & Arrows so much. It would be so easy to have Geoffrey's romantic interest be someone younger and hotter, but instead, they're the right age for each other. (I mean, it helps that Paul and Martha are married in real life, which makes all of their scenes together so much sweeter, to my eye.)

About the only instance I can quickly find where the actress is older is Sela Ward and Hugh Laurie, and she's only three years older than him, so they fit in the same age bracket, really.

Hokay, thus endeth the pop culture rant.

Life continues apace; school continues apace. I had my first experience buying condoms on Saturday -- they're for a scene I'm directing that involves a condom being blown up like a balloon, so I had to get non-lubricated ones -- which was not particularly wacky; the cashier tried to ring up the box and thought it didn't go through at first, and you could see on the poor girl's face that she thought she was going to have to do a price check. Finally she got it to beep -- and ended up charging me twice. But she didn't charge me for the tights I was buying at the same time, so I'm really only five dollars out, and one story up.

*sigh* Oh boy. My knee's been bothering me, so I e-mailed Dad (who's an MD) with a description of how it feels, and he wrote back with

... it sounds to me like you may be having some joint cartilage problem. I am no orthopod, but what you describe sounds like a problem with movement in the knee joint. Climbing stairs puts a fair amount of stress on the knee joint that walking would not. I think you need to see an orthopedist to have the joint looked at to see if it can be cleared up with a little cortisone (which would stop a problem that was purely inflammation) or whether there might be some mechanical issues with how the joint is actually functioning.

Awesome. Nineteen years old, physically fit, and now I might have joint inflammation. Nice, world.

Ugh. I am so tired. It's wet, but warm, and I seem to be hitting the point where I just do not want to be at school anymore. I keep having wistful thoughts of driving to Homer and eating at Bear Tooth, of wandering downtown and being shed on by my cat. I want to go home, and not have to deal with professors and readings and projects and research papers I don't have topics for.

After seeing Run Fatboy Run, I will never again be able to think of these sorts of moments as anything but The Wall. Alas that I do not have Simon Pegg nor Dylan Moran to chivvy me on.

Mm, yeah, that's all I have to say at the moment. Show goes up today, and I'm busy calling on Thespis and Dionysus and Ganesh and every other god of theatre and things going well to send us some Fucking Magic.

I feel like House -- partly 'cause I'm vaguely convinced that the people around me are idiots, but mostly because somehow I've bruised my right thigh, and my right knee's been bothering me for a while. I don't quite limp, but ow.

Having a cane would be kinda fun, anyway.

(Man, House is totally on my list of possible Halloween costumes. The other top contenders are some incarnation of the Doctor, and Rosie the Riveter.)

Burlap? Acquired and made into a sack that doesn't at all disguise the fact that it's a melon in there, not MacB's head, but it's something. I'll wrap the melon in more burlap, I think -- padding and disguise.

Detergent for blood? Acquired.

Tablecloth? Not acquired.

Time spent trekking around Pittsburgh to find these items? Two and a half hours.

Time spent on making the sack? An hour.

I'm just gonna be collapsed over here now.

(Weirdly, my knee, which has been bothering me for weeks, feels good right now.)

I have, however, gone to the grocery store and picked up cheese, raisins, and strawberries. (I realized there that getting a Giant Eagle membership wouldn't be a bad idea, as I'm going to be here for three more years. That was the first time it hit me that I'm living here. This isn't summer camp.) Mmmmmstrawberries.

I have also worked out -- 35 minutes on the elliptical, 310 calories (to make up for the cheese, of course), plus 50 crunches, and bicep and tricep curls. (Does anyone but me care exactly how much I worked out? Probably not. But it's my journal, and I'll brag if I want to!)

Crazy thing -- since coming back from Spring Break, I have abruptly started liking how I look in the mirror on a regular basis. I wouldn't be surprised if this is in part because I'm no longer around scantily clad California babes (no one is quite that scantily clad in Pittsburgh because it's, uh, SNOWING) -- but am I eating better? Did all the eating better finally kick in? Am I working out smarter or something? I have no idea; probably better not to question it too much and just be a narcissist. I look good, baby. (Well, except for my profile, which I think I may never be entirely happy with. Ah, well. And while it's my journal and I'll brag if I want to, me wangsting about why I dislike my jawline will probably make for really boring reading, so I'll refrain.)

Now a shower, and then I really want to play the piano, I think. Probably I should eat sometime in there, too.

Unrelated: Further reasons I love House. Oh, and the last few episodes featured Matt Parkman, Charlie Andrews, Dawn Summers, and Zach. At some point I may have to make a list, because I find this absolutely hilarious.

. . . This latte is gross. D: I think it's the sugar-free vanilla. Dammit. I do actually drink coffee for the taste as well as the caffeine.

Ah, well. Even when the drinks aren't great, I like being a regular here. The barista called me "hun" when he gave me my drink.

*cracks knuckles* Five or six pages of paper to go. It turns out that this isn't actually due until Tuesday night in class, so if I finish today, I might even be able to edit it on Monday. Will I? Take a wild guess. But it's a nice thought.

I feel pretty good, if even more ADD than yesterday. I think I have about 24 hours of focused work ability to allot every weekend, and I used most of that up yesterday. Which is good! It means that the lion's share of the work is done and today I can afford to be ADD. But the ADD is annoying nonetheless.

When I'm done here, I'm gonna go work out. I'm trying to work out on the elliptical trainer rather than the treadmill, because my knees have been complaining over the last couple weeks, which they've never done before. But the elliptical isn't as fun as just running is. madbonnycaptain suggested swimming as a low-impact way of staying in shape, but my asthma is not a fan of swimming. I dunno -- maybe I can alternate elliptical and treadmill so that I get the best of both worlds.

Right, okay, writing now, I swear. Later today there will be a NYC Rentcon organizational post.

I am suddenly, kind of out of the blue, in a fantastic mood. I put this down to a few things:

1) Caffeine.

2) Last week I saw a show, one of the MFA Playwrighting program's thesis projects, called Grae Matters. I didn't get a chance to ask all the questions I wanted to ask of the playwright and director and cast at the post-mortem on Monday -- but I did get to talk to the playwright today while working for Doc. Note this name, theatrical types -- Carol Godart. She's amazing. I got to ask her about a few staging facets of her show, including "Why did you cast the dual part of a teenage girl and a four-year-old girl with a male actor?" She asked me what I thought her reasoning might be, so I told her, and she beamed and looked at Doc and said "Can I take her on all my trips?"

Which is so encouraging, really. I'm not just bullshitting my way through school, I'm learning and applying things and I understand them.

3) "Simple Man," which I think I'm going to retitle "Adelphaki," which if I'm doing everything right means "little brother." Three things, here. For one, I realized a few minutes ago that I could actually submit this somewhere as an original piece, since even though in my mind it's a piece of fanfic, it actually involves characters totally in the public domain. (Hell, I'm wondering if I should rework it as a companion piece to Pandora, though I'm not sure it works thematically with that at all.) I wonder if it fits into all these Trickster myths I write -- stylistically it doesn't, pantheon-wise it doesn't, but . . . Maybe that's going to be the collection. Myths Taken. (And then all the Robert Asprin fans will pick it up out of confusion, and the high-brow fantasy sci-fi readers will avoid it like the plague. Hmm. But I'm such a sucker for bad puns!)

For another, I noticed another bit of accidental brilliance. batyatoon pointed out that the first description of Pandora echoes the earlier lists of gifts that Epimetheus is so excited about. What I noticed, rereading, was that at the beginning, when Zeus came to them, Epimetheus was "so relieved that [he] threw back [his] head and laughed." Later, when he got the news about Atlas, he threw back his head again, and he "screamed to the heavens." Echoing motions makes me all tingly.

And finally, on a reread, I am still way too pleased with myself for the second-person thing. Because then you can read it as Epimetheus, of the long memory, talking to himself, and remembering, and accusing himself. "Coward that you were, fool that you were." Just. That makes me so gleeful. And breaks me into little tiny pieces, but it's kind of awesome nevertheless.

(It excited me, also, that I can write things that even I can analyze and find new things in. I are srs writer, guys!)

4) Listening to Dvorak's cello concerto at the end of Art History. Guh. Just guh. Cello.

So on the whole: in a good mood. I'm gonna go work out while I have the energy, because I am pretty certain I won't actually get much homework done tonight anyway, and maybe doing something productive like working out will inspire me to do more productive stuff.

Buying even a small container of Ben & Jerry's would kind of negate that self-denial. Yes, even if it's not chocolate ice cream. So quit driving yourself crazy by standing by the freezer case longingly.

Exasperated, Me.

PS. That goes for standing longingly in front of the vending machines, too. SUCK IT UP.

I have the lamest motivational technique for working out. *sheepish grin* There's a big TV with cable in the workout room, and I watch whatever's on and tell myself that if I get in shape, it'll up my chances of being on something like that.

Tonight's motivational tape? The Matrix.

So tonight's motivational theme was You could look that good in leather!

*grin* Hey, man, whatever keeps me moving. Watching The Matrix has the added bonus of getting to try to identify what martial arts styles and moves Morpheus and Neo are using.

I think I'm getting the hang of this "stamina" thing -- mainly by finding a pace that I can actually keep up for half an hour, rather than going "Six MPH feels okay!" and five minutes later gasping and panting and hitting the FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP button on the treadmill.

Still not perfect, and the asthma is never going away, but I always feel good afterwards, and not too wheezy, which is great.

I did, however, do something to my leg in karate on Wednesday night, and it's still hurting. It doesn't hurt enough to keep me from running or moving around, clearly, but it does mean I haven't been taking the stairs to my room like I normally would. *eyes it*

Okay, nobody let me forget to make another post re: Rentcon tonight, because the deadline for buying half-price tickets is Jan. 31st (eep! I fail at planning).

Man, we -- along with all the other dramaturgs and literary managers of the country -- had a bake sale today to celebrate G. E. Lessing's (the father of dramaturgy) birthday. I ate WAY too many peanut-butter-and-chocolate Buckeyes because OMG SO GOOD. I shall have to do some running tonight. I wore my "Shakespeare got to get paid, son" shirt for the bake sale and got lots of compliments.

I went in to work for Doc this afternoon, and one of his friends dropped by with his daughter, name of Tamsin. She's probably . . . I dunno, I have no concept of bebe!ages. She's crawling and pulling herself up, and can say "Buh-bah!" when asked to say "Bye-bye!"

And we loved each other. I started playing peek-a-boo, and she gave me the most wonderful smile. And when I tried to leave the office, she started crawling over towards me, so of course I hunkered down, there in the doorway to the office, and offered her my hands. She did something I've never seen a baby do -- she pointed both index fingers and sort of poked them at me, like ET or the Creation of Man or something.

Her dad said, surprised, that she was really taken with me, and that she's really shy right now. "New work study," he joked, "take care of my daughter!"

That, in many ways, makes up for the printers not working and the getting lost and being ten minutes late for a meeting with a professor at which I was told that she doesn't take freshmen in her class (I convinced her to take me. And I know there are other freshmen on the roster -- I saw their names on the roster last week).